New light bulb to last more than 20 years

Light bulbs that are said to last for more than two decades while consuming very little energy may go on sale later this year.

Using light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of filaments, the bulbs are meant to produce as much light as a 100-watt incandescent alternative.

There are so many benefits of LEDs: they can be smaller, brighter; it is one of those rare technologies where the trial has shown it performs better than the lighting systems it is replacing but, at the same time, uses less energy.

Traditional light bulbs pass electricity through a filament, which results in energy being released as both heat and light, leading to a lot of heat being wasted.

But LEDs are made from a semiconductor material, and are able to emit much more light for the same amount of electricity. Learn more here.

Auroras on Uranus

No I’m not being rude !!!

For the first time, astronomers have snapped photos of auroras lighting up Uranus’s icy atmosphere.

Two fleeting, Earth-size auroral storms were imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope as they flared up on the dayside of the gas giant in November 2011.

Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, is an oddball world. At some point in its past, the planet appears to have been knocked on its side, so now its “North Pole” sits where the equator on most planets is located.

The newly observed auroras — seen as tiny white dots in the image above — underscore just how strange Uranus really is.

Auroras, also known as the Northern Lights, appear on Earth when the solar wind – a stream of charged particles emanating from the sun — interacts with our planet’s magnetic field. While terrestrial auroras appear as giant green curtains of light and may last hours, the auroras seen recently on Uranus were relatively small and stuck around only a few minutes. Learn more here or here.

Bluefin Baitball

The bluefin tuna is a hunter swifter than a dolphin and as bold as a great white shark. But little is known of their world. Radio tracking reveals that tuna travel thousands of miles across the ocean, gobbling up smaller fish along the way. Check out the feeding frenzy as a group of bluefin tuna feed on a giant baitball of mackerel:

18 Things You Should Know About Genetics

18 Things You Should Know About Genetics is an animated film that presents fundamental background information about genetics, as well as offering some quirky but interesting facts about DNA, genes and genetics. It was created to be an upbeat, fun educational short film to initiate and draw interest to this sometimes daunting and seemingly complex subject matter.

A single gene can affect IQ

A massive genetics study relying on MRI brain scans and DNA samples from over 20,000 people has revealed what is claimed as the biggest effect yet of a single gene on intelligence – although the effect is small.

There is little dispute that genetics accounts for a large amount of the variation in people’s intelligence, but studies have consistently failed to find any single genes that have a substantial impact. Instead, researchers typically find that hundreds of genes contribute.

Following a brain study on an unprecedented scale, an international collaboration has now managed to tease out a single gene that does have a measurable effect on intelligence. But the effect – although measurable – is small: the gene alters IQ by just 1.29 points. According to some researchers, that essentially proves that intelligence relies on the action of a multitude of genes after all.

The variant is in a gene called HMGA2, which has previously been linked with people’s height. At the site of the relevant mutation, the IQ difference depends on a change of a single DNA “letter” from C, standing for cytosine, to T, standing for thymine.

C is the good one. As well as raising IQ by 1.29, it increases the overall volume of the brain – but only by 0.58 per cent of average brain size, adding around 9 cubic centimetres of tissue. It’s a loss or gain of about 2 teaspoons. Learn more here.

Does Chewing Gum Make You Dumb?

If you thought that chewing gum helped you concentrate, it might be time to reassess. While some old research has suggested that it can help you with abstract reasoning and logic puzzles, new research reveals that it can completely stuff up your short-term memory.

It seems that the periodic action that is chewing gets in the way of repetitious cognitive tasks. If you try and memorise a phone number while tapping your finger, you’ll find it much harder than if you’re not tapping — and they suggest the exact same thing is true of chewing. In fact, they even performed an experiment along those lines, and found that both tapping and chewing gum had similar results on short-term memory.

What this all means for your future chewing is difficult to say with certainty. If you use your short-term memory a lot at work, it might pay to kick the habit. If you’re thinking through abstract concepts all day long though, the occasional quick chew might give you the boost you need. Learn more here.

Earth was originally smashed by a lot of asteroids

The evidence is in the hollow-eyed face of the man in the Moon: a wave of asteroids showered Earth and the Moon in the distant past. They scarred the lunar surface with vast, circular impact basins and wreaked even greater havoc on our planet, which presented a bigger target.

It was originally thought that the Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB) of asteroids came after the initial creation of the planets and lasted from 4.1 billion to 3.8 billion years ago. But it is now thought that Earth was still suffering from regular blows as early as 2 billion years ago.

This was a key period in early evolution, which saw the split of the single-celled organisms called archaea from bacteria, and the rise of photosynthesizing cyanobacteria. How life would have responded to a sustained barrage throughout this period is unclear. Learn more here or here.

Liquid fluoride thorium reactor could solve our energy demands

Learn more here.

The World’s Population Density, Visualised

It’s difficult to get a handle on the population density around the world. Fortunately, this visualisation makes it a little easier to get your head round it.

Put together by Derek Watkins, it’s actually interactive: you get to use a slider to shift the population density and see it change before your eyes. You should head to his website to try it out for yourself. The image above shows the areas around the world that house five people per square mile or more.

The Hottest Place on Earth

Desert sun overhead, volcanic forces beneath your feet, and the average year-round temperature is 34°C (93°F)! This is Danakil Depression in Ethiopia, where the ground springs forth with lava and hot mineral springs that evaporate and leave salt formations behind.

See a collection of beautiful and foreboding photographs of the region here or learn more here.